Schultz's 'both sides give me the sads' pabulum will never propel him or any independent candidate into the White House. But it will re-elect Trump.

Millions of Americans are one missed paycheck from a financial crisis and one billionaire away from four more years of Donald Trump.

As many as three billionaires are or were considering a campaign to replace our president, who became famous playing a billionaire on TV. This is a staggering number if you consider that there are only about 585 billionaires in this country, amounting to about .0002 percent of the U.S. population. Trump has the lowest average popularity for any president in the history of polling. If he manages to win another term, we will likely have a billionaire to thank for it.

Billionaire Howard Schultz, the former CEO and current largest shareholder of Starbucks, wants you to know he’s “seriously” considering running for president in 2020 as an independent because he thinks that Trump is “not qualified” to be president. But Schultz is also terrified that Democrats truly believe the country that made him rich by buying coffee milkshakes for almost $5 a pop can also afford to make sure everyone has quality health care.

This kind of “both sides give me the sads” pabulum is the favorite lukewarm beverage of our mainstream news media, the core constituency for a Schultz campaign. It also might have some appeal for the “Never Trump” Republicans who are willing to do anything to stop this lawless president, except actually vote for a Democrat who could beat Trump.

Since I’m not one of his overpaid consultants, I feel extremely comfortable telling Howard Schultz that he will never become president as an independent. He will not succeed where Ross Perot, who was richer, and Teddy Roosevelt, who was a president, failed. But he could easily re-elect Trump, even if he only wins over Morning Joe’s roughly 1 million viewers.

That’s not just the opinion of almost every nervous liberal in America; it’s the operating theory of a billionaire who recently became a Democrat — Michael Bloomberg. There’s probably no one who has spent more time and resources probing an independent president run than the former mayor of New York City.

Great Lakes states aren't billionaire territory

What did he discover? “In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president,” Bloomberg wrote.

Of course, Bloomberg has a vested interest in making this argument. He wants to run for president as a Democrat.

And in this massive Democratic field, which at this point looks more like a scattering marching band than a game, Bloomberg’s planned $100 million budget could end up yielding him the nomination. And because he’s planning on self-funding, he could become the nominee without even trying to win over the activist base of the party, a base that just drove Democrats to pick up 40 seats in the House as voter turnout rose to levels not seen in a midterm for generations.

If Bloomberg is the Democratic nominee, he could also easily re-elect Trump — by acting as his own spoiler.

Add in the Obama voters who stayed home and the shocking number of Michigan voters who didn’t vote for any presidential candidate, multiply it all by a ridiculous letter from FBI Director James Comey plus a few thousand hacked emails courtesy of Vladimir Putin, and you get President Trump.

Great Lakes states aren't Bloomberg country

If you want to imagine a similar dynamic in 2020, where Trump is re-elected with even less of the 46.1 percent of the popular vote he won in 2016, give him a stiff billionaire or two to run against in the Great Lakes states. If Trump can win just one of the three key states he carried in 2016 by the margin of a crowd at a minor league hockey game, he’ll have a second term to degrade our democracy for his pleasure.

And if one of those billionaire opponents is a Democratic nominee who refuses to disavow a stop-and-frisk policy that unjustly targeted minorities and didn’t make New York City any safer, and is against marginal reforms young voters expect like marijuana legalization, all the better for Trump.

If Trump wins another term, billionaires at least know their taxes won’t go up. I’m not saying this is what’s driving the phenomenon of the rich-guy spoiler. But I will say that all of these billionaires with presidential fantasies would be wise to do what billionaire Tom Steyer has done. He has backed off a run for the presidency to focus on a cause near and dear to him and about 40 percent of America — impeaching Donald Trump.

That's not the cause I'd pick, but at least it's a good one.

Jason Sattler, a writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors and host of "The GOTMFV Show" podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @LOLGOP

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